What’s with coffee shops? Or, a commentary. I think they’re interesting in that they are a space ostensibly created for one thing – imbibing coffee, like that’s the denotation – but the connotation is obviously more about a social purpose, like going out for coffee really means going out to converse (I was going to throw in the word palaver there at first, but then felt silly). I wonder how much of a gestalt affect there is, too; I mean, I know the atmosphere is generally directed towards that kind of social space, with often dim lighting or lots of wood and dark tones, but I wonder how much the fact that the people in the coffee shop are conscious of the fact that they are inhabiting that space and thus kind of playing a role in the purpose of that space augments itself. Of course, that could apply to nigh anything, but that was my original thought anyway.

Speaking of coffee shop conversations, here’s a minor point that came up in one. Every once in a while I unconsciously say ‘gods’ as an exclamation, which in an objective sense would probably label me as a definite fantasy or scifi nerd, in that I’d be imitating some novel or Battlestar Galactica or something. But just to explain, one day I had this sudden thought that took deep root in me, and it’s kind of summed up by (I’ll do my best to remember it correctly) something the poet Kabir (I think) said – “Everyone knows that the drop of water is contained in the ocean, but not everyone realizes that the ocean is in the drop as well.”

So, my thought was that whatever divinity there is or may be, in whatever shape or form, is – if it is divine in the sense that it is everywhere or is everything – also contained in some way in every person…in every drop, as it were. Hence my saying of ‘gods,’ as when I say that I think I’m remembering that thought in some small way. Or, for a different metaphor, as I just read again on the second page of my favorite novel,

“They were the stars, remote, subject to laws and processes larger than human lifetimes. By their high and ancient life you saw the nature of yourself. You were not the pinnacle of creation beneath a protecting veil of sky. You were a fierce, bright atom of selfhood, encircled by fire.”

But, all the stars in their magnitude beyond real comprehension are in that atom as well…Anyway, to loop back around to that gestalt idea, I wonder whether being in that coffee shop brought out something that allowed me to identify with someone else on a topic that wouldn’t have ever really been brought up in a general sense with that person, or maybe I’m just trying to connect to the coffee shop idea too much, who knows.

This hallucinogenic moment has been brought to you by me. The end, as I feel kind of silly now, but there you go.